Thursday

Mar 14, 2019 at 10:59 AM

IONIA COUNTY — A proposed change in wording in the Ionia County Animal Control Ordinance sparked a debate at the Personnel Committee meeting on Tuesday, March 12.

The Ionia County Board of Commissioners comprising the committee — Scott Wirtz, Larry Tiejema and Georgia Sharp — say the ordinance needs to be changed to require warrants in order to meet state law. Director of Ionia County Animal Care and Control Carly Quinn says the move will seriously impede her department, however.

No action was taken on the proposed change Tuesday, but the committee will take a closer look at the warrant process before picking up the discussion at its next meeting, on Tuesday, March 26, at 5:30 p.m.

Currently, animal control has the freedom to search any public or private property without a warrant — except for entering private buildings — in order to perform job duties, per Section 308 of the ordinance.

Multiple commissioners reported receiving complaints about this recently, leading the county to have its attorney review the ordinance’s legality and propose new language. The new language, read by Tiejema at Tuesday’s committee meeting, states an animal control officer would need a search warrant or exigent circumstances to search on private property.

“The difference between what he had before and what we have here,” he said, “is that a warrant is necessary to walk upon the property unless, by looking at the property and observing it from the road, an officer would see something going on that’s illegal.”

Quinn argued the proposed change would cripple the department’s ability to protect neglected and abused animals.

“This would devastate our department,” she said. “It would render us quite useless. We have to have the ability to go and check. If we look at somebody’s house and we don’t see the dog tied up in the front yard, that doesn’t mean it’s not happening out back. We need to be able to perform inspections.”

If the ordinance is changed and a homeowner refuses to let an officer view the property, a warrant would need to be obtained, unless there is evidence of exigent, or extreme, circumstances. Quinn said the time it takes to do this makes the effort all but pointless and detracts from responding to other complaints.

“With them knowing that we have to come back and get a warrant, nine times out of 10 they’re going to move those animals,” she said. “They’re going to change the scene in question. Given that amount of time that we have to go get a warrant, they’re going to change something.

“Having to get a warrant every time you have an inkling about somebody’s animal being neglected, it would set us so far back that we would not be able to get to the other pending complaints we have. It would seriously tie us up. We wouldn’t be able to serve the public and any animals that live in this county.

“We’re already highly scrutinized all the time about how we don’t do enough. If we put this into effect, we would truly not be able to do our job."

Commissioner Wirtz said that it comes down to a Fourth Amendment issue.

“I understand your concerns, but I’m a constitutional guy,” he said during the meeting. “When the founders were doing the Constitution, they made it extremely hard to search individuals and protect that right.

“If the exigent circumstances are there, you should be able to document that in your report and it will back up what you do. If they’re not there, you’ve got to go get a warrant.”

Tiejema said there have been court cases showing that the current ordinance is unlawful by not requiring a search warrant. Quinn noted that many surrounding counties have ordinances with the same wording as Ionia’s current ordinance, but the commissioners said they aren’t concerned with other counties.

“I don’t care about other counties — I care about this one,” Wirtz said.

The committee did recognize Quinn’s complaint regarding the lengthy warrant process and will look for ways to expedite the process before continuing the discussion.

“I think we need to pursue the expediency of a warrant,” Sharp said. “We have to follow the state law.”

County Administrator Stephanie Fox said she was notified by 64-A District Court Administrator Brett Denny that there is a way to speed up the warrant process, but wasn’t sure what that would consist of at the time of the meeting.

Without any expedited system, animal control would have to go to the prosecutor’s office and have a warrant drafted, then present that to a judge and have it signed. This is dependent on the prosecutor and judge both agreeing there is probable cause for a warrant. The process could take several hours or longer.